Who ever thought the saying, “It’s the economy stupid,” from James Carville in 1992 would become a staple in presidential elections 20 years later? That expression made its way into the campaign in 2008, and according to Carville, it could be the theme of the 2012 campaign as well as President Barack Obama seeks reelection. In an appearance on Monday’s “Imus in the Morning” on the Fox... 

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro. Venezuela has severed its relations with the US after Washington imposed sanctions against Venezuela’s state-owned oil company for supplying gasoline to Iran. According to examiner.com, Venezuela officially “froze” relations with the United States on Sunday, a top diplomat from President Hugo Chavez’s government said. Venezuelan Foreign Minister... 

Belgium will soon become the second country in Europe to ban the burqa in public places, after the parliament approved legislation forbidding full veils, the bill’s author said today. The legislation quietly cleared the Senate last week after it was overwhelmingly approved by the lower chamber of deputies last month, when only one Green lawmaker voted against it and two abstained. The new law... 

Libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) made headlines last week for single-handedly obstructing the renewal of the Patriot Act, calling the law an unconstitutional infringement on civil liberties. His demand to insert a series of amendments to weaken the law nearly allowed it to lapse and put the country at “risk,” but Paul said it was worth it to prevent the government from continuing to “blatantly... 

The former Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a new published report that he had not seen “a shred of evidence” that Iran was “building nuclear-weapons facilities and using enriched materials.” Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient who spent 12 years at the IAEA, told investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, “I don’t believe Iran is a... 

Former head of the CIA Michael Scheuer talks about Osama bin Laden at the Hay Festival. David Cameron and Barack Obama ”don’t have a clue” about dealing with the war on terror, a former senior member of the CIA has claimed. Speaking at The Daily Telegraph-sponsored Hay Festival, Michael Scheuer said western politicians had to accept that the conflict in the Middle East was caused... 

Australia has suspended exports of live cattle to a number of killing facilities in Indonesia following exposure of brutal practices in some of the country’s abattoirs. Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig said the decision was based on footage collected by Animals Australia that showed cattle being mistreated before slaughter. “I have decided to halt the trade of live animals to the facilities... 

Shutdown: The Grafenrheinfeld plant, Bavaria, Germany. All 17 of the country's nuclear plants will be shut by 2022. Germany is to shut its entire nuclear power network over safety fears triggered by the meltdown of the Fukushima atomic plant in Japan. Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that her country will pull the plug on nuclear energy by 2022. Germany – a country without natural gas or oil... 

PROTECT IP Act could censor anything, including search engines. The controversial PROTECT IP Act unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee today. When the PROTECT IP Act becomes law U.S. authorities and copyright holders will have the power to seize domains, block websites and censor search engines to prevent copyright infringements. Introduced just two weeks ago, the bill now heads over to... 

After hearing news the other day that the Obama administration had appointed a new position to monitor and push back against negative online press we thought some liberals in DC might think it wasn’t enough. So we sent Joe Schoffstall out to see just how far liberals would go to silence conservative speech. Joe went around Georgetown in DC with a petition to “Ban Conservative Hate Sites”... 

Why would NATO not bomb Bahrain and Yemen? It would seem than their leaders, from a Western point of view, are no better than Gaddafi or al-Assad. According to the Western elites, they allegedly are rigidly oppressing their people. What about the behavior of the Bahraini King and the Yemeni president? The former, unable to cope with people’s anger, brought in the Saudi troops for the suppression... 

In 1991, after the Soviet Union dissolved, everything changed but stayed the same. As a result, today’s stakes are far greater, presenting much larger threats to world peace. In America, neocons are still dominant. Obama is more belligerent than Bush, waging four wars and various proxy ones. The Israeli Lobby, Christian Right, and other extremist elements drive them. Conflict is preferred over... 

Pro-Western media are completing the “artillery preparation” against Syria. In the West they have already built an image of Assad as a tyrant hated by the people and who is inferior to Gaddafi only in terms of the degree of his undemocratic attitude. Now Western journalists are arguing how many “peaceful demonstrators” he has killed – one hundred, five hundred or two... 

Pakistanis gather by the rubble of a government building targeted in a bombing in the Pakistani town of Hangu, Friday, May 27, 2011. At least eight people have been killed and 14 others left injured in a bomb explosion in a busy marketplace in northwestern Pakistan. Mohammed Saeed, a doctor at the region’s hospital, said they have received four bodies. He said four others had died in the hospital... 

Several nationalist and anti-immigration parties have become the most popular in their countries, topping recent opinion polls in France, Austria and Finland. France’s Front National, Austria’s Freedom Party and Finland’s True Finns have all headed voters’ surveys in recent weeks. In March, Marine Le Pen’s party received 23 per cent in a poll of voting intentions for 2012’s presidential...